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View Full Version : Black Rhodium Stylus Tonearm Cable



Ammonite Audio
30-10-2015, 20:03
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s301/hugocass/Black_Rhodium_stylus_Cable_zps2wjfdbck.jpg
http://ammonite-acoustics.co.uk/product/black-rhodium-stylus-tonearm-cable/

I now have the Black Rhodium Stylus tonearm cable in stock in the webshop, and I reckon that it merits a few enthusiastic words. On the face of it, the Stylus is a very well-made, middle-price tonearm cable which is fitted with Black Rhodium's own (rhodium) plated connectors, but it does sound rather good. Paul Rigby (who also writes in HFW and HiFi Critic) reviewed it on his own website at http://www.theaudiophileman.com/#!black-rhodium-stylus/cx8y and rated it as "Deeply Groovy". Have read of the whole review on Paul's website, but he summarised his review as follows:


The Stylus allowed my SME IV to really come to life, the enhanced clarity and accuracy not only helped the music to deliver a sonically more interesting performance but the lower distortion and noise meant that I could now lower the gain of my phono amp and increase the gain of my pre-amp to achieve the same volume producing a more relaxed yet still vibrant performance. Is this the ultimate SME phono cable?

Apart from its really rather good sound quality, it's worth shouting about this cable's low capacitance, which Black Rhodium state at just 85pF for a 1.3m cable. Using my Peak Atlas LCR meter, I have confirmed that; indeed it's actually slightly lower at 80pF for the 1.3m cable. Why is that worth mentioning? Well, if you want to use a good Moving Magnet cartridge, many of these don't like to see too much total capacitance (eg due to the tonearm's internal wiring, the external cable, plus the phono amp's own loading capacitors which is typically 100-200pF). Too much capacitance can mean you start to get nasty high frequency resonance which can make the thing sound shrill and nasty, and many good MM cartridges have been dismissed because they have not been optimally loaded, eg the Ortofon 2M Black.

I have measured a few tonearm cables that I have here and none get anywhere near the Black Rhodium Stylus in terms of low capacitance (the lowest is 130pF for a 1m length).

So, if you wish to make the best of a Moving Magnet cartridge, this could be the cable for you, but it does work very nicely with MC cartridges too, of course. It's priced at £350 for the standard 1.3m length and I reckon that you'd have to pay a great deal more to get something better. I do rate budget tonearm cables made using Van Damme Pro-Patch wire, which are pretty much unbeatable at the price, but sonically the Stylus does really show them a clean pair of heels, as it were.